It may be a woman’s need to eat for two during pregnancy that makes it harder for women in general to turn down favorite foods or to keep eating even after hunger has been sated.  In an effort to shed light on why so many people keep eating even when full, researchers found women tend have a harder time than men do and it may be the way women’s brains are hard-wired that makes food such an irresistible temptation to them, even when not pregnant.

Dr. Gene-Jack Wang, professor of psychiatry at New York’s Mount Sinai School of Medicine and senior scientist at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, led a team of researchers through a study that involved brain activity and hunger.  He suggests the evolutionary mission to nurture a healthy baby may make women’s brains respond to food in a manner different than men’s brains do.

Wang says this same appetite-controlling brain activity probably didn’t cause any harm throughout human history because, historically, people didn’t get much opportunity to eat more food than they needed.  He says it’s only been the past 30 or 40 years, when food in the United States has become so abundant, that this brain activity has produced detrimental effects.  It’s also been during that same period of time that the current obesity epidemic has developed.

Wang’s study, published in the current issue of the ‘Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,’ involved 13 women, 10 men, some of their favorite calorie-laden foods, and PET scans.  Study participants told researchers they liked foods such as ice cream, brownies, fried chicken, lasagna, and pizza.  But they didn’t get to eat their fill of any of these delicacies.

Instead, after a 20-hour fast, their favorite foods were presented and they were allowed to smell the foods, even taste them, but they could not eat freely.  They were then instructed to do their best to inhibit the desire for food as PET scans recorded the activity of their brains.

In both the men and the women, specific areas of the brain became active when the foods were presented.  One area of increased activity also controls emotion and motivation.

Both the men and women reported to researchers that they’d successfully turned off their desire for food but the women’s brains were still behaving as if they were hungry.  The research team cites this discrepancy between the desire to eat and brain activity that contradicts that desire as possible evidence of the body’s need to eat more during pregnancy and perhaps it’s an influencing factor behind a person’s inability to stop eating when full, a temptation faced by many diners of never-ending buffet-style meals.

Wang feels his research may provide improved understanding of why some people cannot resist the temptation of calorie-dense foods and why so many people keep eating even after they’re full.  He says some people may be simply unable to stop eating and hopes this research may lead to the means to help these people control their raging appetites.